Ji-Won Song Wins Mozart Violin Competition

New England Conservatory student Ji-Won Song has won the Ninth Leopold Mozart International Violin Competition. Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Song will take home a €10,000 first place prize, a CD recording, concert opportunities, and also the €2,000 audience prize. Song is currently in her first year of the Master of Music program at NEC, where she studies with Donald Weilerstein and Soovin Kim.

NEC's past Mozart Violin Competition winners

About The Leopold Mozart International Violin Competition

The Leopold Mozart International Violin Competition, held every three or four years since 1987, serves to carry on the vision of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s father, Leopold, and also to support the next generation of violinists. Sitting on the 2016 jury were Paul Roczek, Achim Fiedler, Suzanne Gessner, Vladimir Ivanov, Min Kim, Senta Kraemer, Gyorgy Pauk, Baiba Skride, Wei-Dong Tong and Petru Munteanu.

The competition is held in honor of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s father, Leopold, in the elder’s birthplace of Augsburg, Germany. Wolfgang’s father was an excellent teacher to his famous son. The year Wolfgang was born, his father opened his important violin school in Augsburg. In recent years, Leopold Mozart's Violin School has experienced a renaissance in the city and students from all over the world travel there to study.

More about this competition (in German)

About Ji-Won Song

A native of Seoul, South Korea, Ji-Won Song has performed on stages worldwide. She performed at the Kennedy Center for the Conservatory Project in 2005 at age 12 and has been a featured soloist with many prestigious orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Her many awards include prizes in the Schadt Competition, the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists, and the Stulberg International String Competition. In 2014, Song was awarded the $50,000 first prize at the fourth China International Violin Competition, held in Qingdao. Ji-Won began her musical studies at age five and studied in the pre-college division of the Korean National University of the Arts. After moving to the United States, she served as concertmaster in the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and graduated from the Young Artist Youth Program of the Cleveland Institute. Song currently studies at New England Conservatory, prior to that, she studied at the Heifetz Institute and Curtis Institute. She plays on a Montagnana provided by the Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation.